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Please note: additional presentations, expanded
vendor exhibition, adjusted meeting times
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The Laboratory Robotics Interest Group
February 1998 Meeting
Drug Discovery
Date: Wednesday, February 25, 1998
Place: Somerset Marriot Hotel
110 Davidson Avenue, Somerset, NJ 08873
Phone: 732-560-0500 Fax: 732-560-3669
Itinerary:
Hors d'oeuvre & Vendor Exhibition, 4:30 to 6:30 pm
Presentations, 6:30 to 9:00 pm
Pre-Registration: not required
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Agenda: This meeting will address the topics of Combinatorial
Chemistry, Compound Distribution and Ultra High Throughput
Screening. During the Social Period which will feature
hors d'oeuvre and a cash bar, there will be a Vendor's
Exhibition. Following will be four presentations,
with question and answer periods. Members interested in
presenting a poster during the Social Period are encouraged to
do so. Open career positions at your company may be announced
or posted. There is no fee to attend the meeting.
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Presentation: Massively Parallel, Microfabricated Systems for
High-Throughput Drug Discovery
Sheila H. DeWitt
Orchid Biocomputer
201 Washington Road, Princeton, NJ 08543-2197
A microfluidic, chip-based system for the integration of
high-throughput drug discovery efforts has been developed and
demonstrated as a collaborative effort between SmithKline
Beecham and Orchid Biocomputer. The applications include all
areas of preclinical drug discovery including combinatorial
chemistry, ultra high-throughput screening, genomics, drug
metabolism, and toxicology. The microfluidic chip incorporates
microfabricated components for valving and pumping of fluids,
within a three-dimensional fluidic network. The pumping and
valving mechanisms have no moving parts, making large scale
integration feasible and inherently reliable. Key aspects of the
highly integrated electrokinetic transport of fluids, and
representative examples including the transport of organic
solvents and reagents will be presented.
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Presentation: UHTS: The New Challenge of the Sample Dispensary
Eric W. Kaldy
The Automation Partnership
9 Blueberry Hill Reserve, Killingworth, CT 06419
In the past few years there has been an explosion of new
chemical entity generation and biological target identification.
This push coupled with the pull of the business need to fill the
product pipeline faster has created a new technology, Ultra High
Throughput Screening (UHTS). The realization of UHTS throughputs
100,000 or more assays per day places new demands on the
compound dispensary. How do you store & retrieve, prepare, and
dispatch libraries of 50,000 - 2,000,000 compounds
for UHTS, HTS, and therapeutic biology assay testing while
maintaining sample and data integrity? How do you achieve both
high throughput and flexibility? This talk identifies the
critical issues associated with dispensary management and
automation logistics.
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Presentation: MOBA: An Ultra-High Throughput Screening Platform
For Lead Generation, Characterization, and Optimization
Frank H. Michaels, Ph.D.
Research Director, The Biotechnology Laboratories at
Thomas Jefferson University
Director of Research, GEM Array Biosciences.
A cell based, ultra-high throughput screening platform
technology capable of operating in a completely automated
micro-miniaturized environment is being developed. This
technology employs Genetically Engineered Microorganisms
(GEMs) designed to detect biochemical interactions of
pharmacological importance. Because the screening system
employs whole viable cells, toxic compounds are detected
and deleted from future development. Additionally, because
intracellular availability of lead compounds is required for
assay activity, poorly absorbed compounds are identified.
Assay cycle times are less than 2 hours, and micro- to
nanomolar ED50s can be detected. New assay development
commonly requires less than 8 weeks, and subsequent lead
optimization entails significantly less time. This novel
technology can detect protein-protein, RNA-protein and
DNA-protein interactions allowing the generation of arrays
of microminiaturized assays to define medically important
candidates from combinatorial libraries or assemblies of
crude extracts for lead identification and optimization.
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Presentation: HTS-Factory ® : An Industrial Approach to
High Throughput Screening
Ernst Burgisser
Discovery Technologies, Inc.
Switzerland
The enormous demand for rapid and cost-effective performance
of high throughput screening (HTS) is calling for novel
concepts in automation and logistics. Discovery Technologies
Ltd., a newly founded service and technology company,
provides custom-oriented HTS and follow-up services. An
HTS-Factory® has been designed to process up to 100,000
tests (which is equivalent to 1,200 96-well microplates)
within one working day. Higher density formats can be
implemented, as long as they fit the standard microplate
footprint, yielding a multiplication of throughput. In
contrast to well-established laboratory automation solutions,
the HTS-Factory concept is based on industrial handling
technology , which has proven to be very reliable, fast and
cost-effective for more than two decades.
The key elements of the HTS-Factory are: 1.) fully automated
storage and retrieval system for chemical libraries,
pre-plated in 96-well microplates and kept under dry and
inert atmosphere; 2.) all the microplate handling is done
in stacks of ten plates; 3.) a newly designed plate stacker
is capable of presenting all plates within less than a minute
to liquid handlers, incubators, and readers; 4.) several
96-channel pipetters are working simultaneously; 5.) the
plates stacks are transported on a fast conveyor system with
individual shuttles; 6.) all plates are bar-coded, allowing
perfect tracking and quality assurance. Further to the high
throughput mode, the system prepares assay plates for upcoming
HTS projects, compound mixture plates ("matrix cocktail"),
plates for verification assays as well as preparation of
microplates for EC-50 determination in a fully automated
and unattended 24-hour mode.
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Exhibiting Vendors:
Argonaut Technologies
Beckman Instruments Inc.
Bohdan Automation
Comgenex
Corning Inc.
CRS Robotics Corporation
Cutting Edge Scientific
EG&G Wallac Inc.
Fisher Scientific
Greiner America
Hewlett Packard
LJL Biosystems
Matrix Technologies Corp.
Nalge Nunc International
NichaurioAmerica
Perkin-Elmer Tropix
PerSeptive Biosystems
Quark Enterprises Inc.
Robbins Scientific
Society for Biomolecular Screening
The Automation Partnership
TiterTek / LabRepCo
TomTec Inc.
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For more information contact:
Chairman:
Dennis France
dennis.france at pharma.novartis.com
(973)503-6030
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
Vice Chairman:
Ed Kanczewski
kanczee at aa.wl.com
(201)540-6479
Warner-Lambert
Secretary:
Andy Zaayenga
andy.zaayenga at tekcel.com
(732)302-1038
TekCel Corporation
Treasurer:
William Haller
bhaller at ompus.jnj.com
(908)218-6341
Ortho-McNeil
Agricultural Applications Chair:
Sharon Reed
reeds at pt.cyanamid.com
(609)716-2905
American Cyanamid
High Throughput Screening Chair:
John Babiak
babiakj at war.wyeth.com
(732)274-4788
Wyeth-Ayerst Research
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Directions: